Latest / Our Community, Our Mission / Ep #217 – Meet Johnathan Sublet

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Ep #217 – Meet Johnathan Sublet · Our Community, Our Mission

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, lord, for this day.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: God, your blessings, your continual provisions over our lives and, lord, just thank you for partnership, thank you for our wonderful friend that we have on today and just the impact that he's making, his organization's making, and, lord, that we just get to partner together.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Lord, it's for your kingdom, and we just again thank you for the listeners.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Lord, pray that they would be blessed and encouraged by this conversation today.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: In your holy son's precious name, we pray Amen.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody, you're listening to Our Community, our Mission, a podcast of the Topeka Rescue Mission here on Wednesday, april the 10th of 2024, podcast number 217.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Woo-hoo, yeah, yeah, we're keeping on the roll.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I know it's kind of hard to believe I was only two years old when we started this.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I know, and you had hair.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Well, not when I was.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not too well, maybe when I was two.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: We didn't say 2017,.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Barry.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's start this over.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Amanda Broyles, executive Director of the Peter Raskin Mission, mary and Crabill.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Deputy Director of other stuff Of stuff and a very special guest here today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But of course we know that most of you that tune in to our community, our mission, do this because you want to know what the special part of today is right.
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: Well, I know it's special to you.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: For some of us it's painful.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think we've ever said it's special.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I know Shopping, shopping.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I've ever said what I know Shopping.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Shopping.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Shopking, no, my sheet says.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And LaManda, you would go with this one, right, it's National.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: What day?
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Hug your dog day.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Hug your dog day.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: We do love our dogs, yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Hey, do you know, I have a joke.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: You have a joke?
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: Yes, oh, no, I've just heard.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: No, I've never heard LeMann and Broyles say a joke.
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: I know I haven't either.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: I'm scared.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: I heard two of them this morning.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Do we have a?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: drum roll, Josh.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Do we have a drum roll or a wah, wah, wah.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: No, they're really funny.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, one is are you ready?
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: No, what do you call a dog that can't bark?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: A hush puppy.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow, okay, I have one, I have one more.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Our guest is hanging his head say why did I come over here today?
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Uh, what do you call a dog that has a fever?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a hot dog, oh gosh you got that from your chapel?
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: okay, yes no, no I yeah, see, you know before, before we started, our guest was talking about a refresh day.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Maybe I need one.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking maybe Well, just so you know, I also saw those jokes being told by chickens on the Internet, and you all know that I love chickens.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I just want you all to know that this is what happens to executive directors at the Peaker Rescue Mission.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: After a while, I'm pretty confident an intervention is coming.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Please send in your prayers of support.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: You're welcome.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Those jokes are free.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Well, national Hug your Dog Day, and whether you hug your dog or not, your dog's going to hug you if you're kind to your dog, and so that's what happened early with me this morning.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: But hugging your dog releases a hormone in both a pup and the person, called oxytocin, and so that is good stuff.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, makes you happy.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Makes you happy.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's informally referred to as the cuddle hormone with your dog.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: And you know the thing I like about my dog and I'm sure most dogs like this doesn't matter what kind of day you've had.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: When you come home, it's like, ah, he's here.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's fresh start.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Forget about where you were.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I don't care where you were, you're here now and so we start.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: It's also for some people and some people enjoy this it's National, something.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Else Day it has to do with brothers and sisters.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sibling Day, right, yeah, what's a sibling?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Miriam?
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Well, for me it's brothers and sisters-in-law, because they become A him A family?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I might actually love them more than my brother sometimes it says on this day that sometimes your siblings are your best friends and sometimes your worst enemies.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So I don't know.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I'm a little child, so my parents said, forget, I'm not doing this again.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: So I don't know about that.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: It's also and I don't know how these things work together and who comes up with this stuff.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Josh, you probably just make this stuff up, don't you?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: None of it's real so you've got National Hog, your Dog Day, national Sibling Day it could kind of go hand in hand.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: And then National Safety Pin Day.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the significance of National Safety Pin Day?
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Have you ever needed one and not had one?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's typically when you need one and you don't have one Exactly Now.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: you know why.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: They would make a day for it.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: When our kids were babies we were very fortunate that they came out with the sticky tape stuff, you know.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Oh for the diapers Because I was afraid I would kill my kid, you know, I mean this is like.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And then they had to wash the things afterwards and that was oh.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: And you washed a lot of diapers, did you, barry?
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Not many, no.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I was holding a sign of of we'll work for diapers.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, but it's definitely a useful invention.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I guess they still use them today, right?
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, they do.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: Safety pins day, well because you know if you're environmentally conscious.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: It's all about creation care right.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: Those diapers last forever in the ground.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: That's not a good thing, right?
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: So cloth diapers.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Now you tell me so appreciate the safety pin.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: When you were doing all that, I really might not have been born yet.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I got a 42 year old kid, and now you tell me so anyway.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Well, we better get into another part of our enjoyment today before he says I got work to do.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: So we have a special friend of the Topeka Rescue Mission, the community personal friend, been a real game changer coming to Topeka and his name is Jonathan Slablett.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: He came to Topeka I remember I was on your interview when you came because we had a thing called Net Reach over in the High Crest neighborhood and we were looking at handing that ball off to another organization and at that time you were working with a fellowship Bible Church and they brought you in here to then kind of let you go and let you go do your thing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: And so today you currently are the founding pastor and the servant pastor, which we'll say is a lead pastor of Fellowship Highcrest of a church and also the founder, current president and serving as the interim executive director of SENT.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: So that's a lot of stuff over that neighborhood.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: So, jonathan, when did you come, where'd you come from, and tell us about what SENT and Fellowship Highcrest is doing?
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: And welcome, Welcome, welcome, welcome.
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: Thank you all guys for having me on and always.
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: Topeka Rescue Mission is setting the standard for what it looks like to care for those on the margins in our community, not only here in Topeka but across the nation.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: And so I am proud to be a citizen and resident of a town with a tremendous partner, like y'all guys, thank you and a resident of a town with a tremendous partner like y'all guys, thank you.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: And so I've been here now since, I guess, the end of 2017.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: I came in.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I bought a house without ever stepping foot in.
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: It Was it a good thing.
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: It was a good thing because I live in the best neighborhood this side of New.
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: Jerusalem.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: So until Jesus comes back, I have the prime real estate on this planet, and so I truly believe that.
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: And so both Fellowship, high Crest and Scent are six years old, and so we're located in the High Crest community of Topeka, and so that neighborhood is a traditionally red line neighborhood, so it was one that was discriminated upon through real estate practices where certain people couldn't live there.
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: If you go back to the original city planning maps for the city of Topeka 1923, that you can find at the library the neighborhood was rated as a D rated neighborhood because Negroes lived there.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: It actually says that on the maps.
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah and so.
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: And then in the year 2000, the city of Topeka started doing neighborhood health mapping and from that point the High Crest neighborhood had always been an intensive care neighborhood until two summers ago, where our strategy is working, we moved from being intensive care to at risk for the first time in history, and the city employee nearly choked when he said it.
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: The first time in history.
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: And the city employee nearly choked when he said it Can't be Something wrong with the data.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I moved up from Texas.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: My background I'm the third kid of a single mom, all three different dads and really some challenging circumstances to my upbringing.
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: I mean, when I got ready to go to college I had a one-way plane ticket on.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: Southwest to a city I had never visited before because I couldn't afford to go on college tours.
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: An employee from the university picked me up at the airport and I was there.
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: I got a chemical engineering degree.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: Part of that came because my sixth grade teacher took me to a basketball game at SMU and he told me that I was going to get a college scholarship, and I believed him.
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: He also took me to his house for dinner, but before he did he took me by shotgun house in my neighborhood and he said that's where I grew up at.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: And then he took me to dinner at his house and he lived in a brick home with a yard and a fence and we ate dinner with his family.
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: And that was the first time, other than the Cosby show, that I had seen a family eat dinner together.
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: I said one day I'm going to be rich and people say what does that mean?
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: I said one day I'm going to have a family and we're going to eat dinner together.
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: So I eat dinner with my family probably five to six days a week.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: My team says I have one of the biggest dinner tables they've ever seen because we often have other people around there.
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: That's because that's what makes me rich is by having dinner and inviting people to sit at my table, and so we continue that practice.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: And then, when I was in seventh grade, two engineers came to my seventh grade science class.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: I applied to a magnet or a academy within the school district across town.
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: They bussed us across town out of my, out of my neighborhood, um, and they came in and I had never heard what an engineer um did before.
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: I thought engineers ran trains before that and they explained and I said that day, I said I'm gonna be an engineer.
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: I decided as a seventh grade student that day I was going to be an engineer.
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: And then on the eighth grade, um, I was traveling with my grandfather through Louisiana, my dad's father who passed.
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: I lost both of my parents within a year.
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: My mom just passed on the 30th of December and my granddad passed, a little bit after my dad actually, little bit after my dad actually, but we were on a trip to Plaquemine, louisiana, where my granddad is from, and it's right across the bridge from Baton Rouge, if any of y'all guys know southern Louisiana, and I saw a red diamond on a sign for a chemical plant and I remember seeing that red diamond on a bowl in my mom's kitchen and I said one day I'm going to work for that company, I'm going to make a new plastic.
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Well, I founded a chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers at the University of Tulsa.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: There was only there was less than 10 African-American students in the whole College of Engineering and Natural Sciences and I wrote down some journalism students to be the historians, some business students and finance students to fill the other officers.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: And I wrote to the only African-American professor at the entire university to be our sponsor, and from that point I started it and some companies asked if they could interview me at the national conference that year and I went and then I pulled up at the plant in a rental car that they paid for with no money at all.
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: I had eleven dollars in my bank account so I couldn't even go to the ATM to pull it out.
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: As a kid, as an eighth grader, that I was now interviewing with the vice president of operations for that second largest chemical company in the world, I ended up taking a job with them and I was a chemical engineer for close to 15 years and before going full-time ministry I was bivocational most of that time and then I planted a church there on the coast of Texas, right on the coast outside of in a little town called Freeport Lake, jackson area, and worked there before coming here and starting a church.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So, with the challenging upbringing that you had, sounds like there was one intersection with this family that really was a game changer for what you wanted to do differently.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: What else in your life poured into you, and where did God intersect with you in that?
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: So one of the things is I tell people all the time it wasn't just one intersection.
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: Sometimes I'm amazed that God would choose a little fat boy from South Oak Cliff to bless him the way that I've been blessed in my life.
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: The difference between my brother and sister and myself I'm the only one of my mom's kids to graduate high school and the difference is there were always people outside of my neighborhood, outside of my family, that poured into me more than what they were required to, that, starting with teachers all the way at the kindergarten age on up.
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: I can still remember my teachers in early childhood education that taught me the songs they did and the vanilla pudding they served me in cups.
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: They poured into me in a supernatural way, and so it was the people who took in my way out of the neighborhood I was in was my faith and my education.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Those are two things that people can never take away from me, no matter what's been done to me over my lifetime, and that was my way out and that's why I'm such a believer and advocate that I am.
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: It started, I mean I had people outside my family A lot of times.
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: I was the only person in my household going to church, even though both of my parents are PKs, and the Salvation Army bus would come and pick some of us up.
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: My teacher, who was my basketball coach, would come pick us up.
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: He's like, if you're going to come, if you're going to play basketball, you're going to go to church on Sundays, and he would come.
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: He was our public school teacher and he would come pick us up and he would come.
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: He was our public school teacher and he would come pick us up and he would take us to church with him.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: I had friends that would take me.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: I had aunts or uncles sometimes that would take me.
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: Sometimes, depending on where my relationship was with my dad.
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: Sometimes I would go with him.
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: But even if I got up on my own as a little kid, I would always go.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: And people would say early on they were like man, you're going to be a preacher.
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: And I was like, no, I'm not.
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: Like you know, both of my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers are ministers and I'm like I want none of that life at all.
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go work for a Fortune 500 company.
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: My goal is to be CEO.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: So understandably why you would say we're going to go the direction we're going to go professionally, why you would say we're going to go the direction we're going to go professionally.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: And people have invested in your life, these people outside of your family and others, which taught you a lot.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: How did you discover Topeka, kansas, or how did they discover you?
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: Man.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: They discovered me.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: My wife actually is from Western Kansas but she was living in Kansas City.
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: We met on eHarmony and the way we met was the thing that drew me to her was at the time I was not only playing the church in Southern Texas but I was taking mission trips every year to both Cambodia and Africa, along with all my business travel to Europe that I was doing and I was praying and I said God, I want someone who has a heart for Southeast Asia, like I do.
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: And so I was on eHarmony and I saw this profile with Khmer that's the language they speak in Cambodia on there and it was my wife's profile and I was like I'm going to reach out to her.
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: And she grew up in Western Kansas but she had lived in China serving in ministry for three years and then she lived in Cambodia for three and a half years and she was back getting her math.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: She came back and got her master's, where she's a mental health therapist, and she had worked in some different homes with transitional homes and she helped.
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: She was helping to plant a church, actually kansas city, and working as a therapist with moxa I don't know if you've ever heard of them, they're the organization for sex crimes and sexual abuse and different things that nature.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: So she would be one of the people that get called by the hospitals when somebody arrives that had been sexually abused.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: She would be one of the ones that arrived and walked um the the young lady through that.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: And also she worked with youth who had committed sex crimes and their parents, because that's just part of our heart to say and we have to walk with them, they're not throwaway, there's no throwaways in god's, in god's ecosystem.
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: And so we we met and we dated long distance and then she moved down to Texas.
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: I thought I was done with Kansas after I had the wedding here.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: You got her out of Kansas.
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: Oh, I got her out.
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: And then here's the real right the church I was planning.
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: We were doing all the same things that we're doing in the high-christ community.
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: There.
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: One of my closest friends in the world was our church financial secretary and treasurer and he stole all the money from the church and a hurricane hit this is fresh not too long after we've been married and we also had three foster kids At that time.
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: We got them when my youngest was 10 months and they were the youngest three of nine, and so I got twins and then a younger son, and so all this was going on and I get a call from Topeka.
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: Now, when all this hits, we end up being at a point where we're going to have to dissolve the church.
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: And I was going back to Tulsa because I have some friends doing the same kind of work that I'm doing here in North Tulsa and there are a couple of years ahead.
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: But we had always they had tried to hire me several times, but I wouldn't leave Texas.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: I was like I hate the cold.
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: I'm not.
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: I'm not moving back um anywhere North, right, I'm like people come from the beach to come to my church service.
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: Right I'm like.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: So I'm not moving to cold, it's not happening.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Um, I got seafood, I got fruit.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: I'm not moving.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And um better, by then you said you weren't going to go and minister either, but you did.
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: I made a deal with God when I went to Bible college that if he would just let me be a deacon and teach Sunday school, that he would leave me alone.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Those deals are always sealed, aren't they?
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I?
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Mean those are the kiss of death sometimes.
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: So yeah, so I mean it's one of those deals.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: And then I got a call and I was like I'm going to Tulsa, I'm like I'm not going to Kansas.
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: My wife said you should just listen, and um, and then I came up, man, and uh, I saw the green space and I saw, like everyone I talked to, I felt like everyone, I, I called my wife after that first day.
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: I said, babe, everywhere I go, people are just crying.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: I was like I, I called my wife after that first day.
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: I said, babe, everywhere I go, people are just crying.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: I was like I don't know if this is a good thing or like everybody's crying as they ask me the vision that I have for this area.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: But I see so much.
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: And then that night, the last night I was here, they wanted me to teach the youth because they'd already started working with the youth and about 13 of the youth after I spoke said they wanted to.
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: Either they either stepped across the line of faith that night or wanted to be baptized and I was like that coming.
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: And then I went back to the house of the person I was staying with that was hosting me.
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: Because I believe proximity matters, I wanted to stay in the neighborhood.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: I didn't want to just talk to church folks.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: When I came here and that's a part of the story of saying I said I want to talk with the people you're partnering with in the community.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: I don't want to spend time talking with y'all church folks.
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: And there was a knock at the door.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: I'm getting ready to go to bed and there was a knock at the door and there was three young African-American males.
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: And you know, have you ever been there where somebody tries to slip out the door and not let you see who's outside the door?
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: And that's what happened with my host and he was talking with them.
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: He said, okay, you can come in.
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: And so it was three young African-American teenagers.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: They were hungry.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: We had some extra pizza he let them in to and they started telling me about their story.
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: And I said, hey, have y'all guys ever been to a museum?
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: And they said, yeah.
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: I said, well, I don't know about you, but man, everything in that museum I didn't think was the hottest thing, right.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: And they said, yeah, some things were ugly.
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: I was like, I agree, but you know what?
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: I can't afford a single thing in that museum.
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: But you know what?
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: I can't afford a single thing in that museum.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: And I said you know why?
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: And they said no.
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: I said because the things in that museum are not valued by what I think of them, but by who made them.
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: And I said you were made by infinite God and that means you have infinite dignity, value and worth.
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: And I said my card.
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: And I said I don't know if I'm coming here or not, but I said I'm committed to you and I said whenever you decide whatever you want to do, you reach out to me and I'm going to do everything I can to help you, whether I come here or not.
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: I said I love you and I want the best for you and we need you.
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: You are important, your story is important.
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: And the young man all broke down and cried and I shared the gospel with him that night at the table and after they left, my host said man, I don't know if they've ever heard another adult male tell him that he loved them.
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: And I went back to my room and I'm sharing all this with my wife and I'm like, hey, this is what happened.
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: And she said I thought you said you weren't going to Topeka.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: I said I wasn't, but I got to tell my friends that I can't come, and this is the third time that they've offered me a job and the second time I've accepted and been and then backed out.
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: So here I was wow wow, yeah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: So six years later six years later we have both um sent and fellowship high christian.
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: A lot of people wonder they, why would a pastor ever start something non-religious?
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: Because Scent is a non-religious community development.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: You and I had that conversation, yeah.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: And there's a couple of reasons around that.
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: First of all, I want you to know that the work we do in High Christ starts with Scent, but its core is Fellowship.
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: High Christ Right, because and here's why, when you look at this thing, god always started on the margins.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: There's nothing further away from a holy God than creation.
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: When it's dark and void and formless, disorder and chaos and darkness is about the furthest away.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: And so he always, like he didn't change who he was, to move on the margins and to exist in the margins with creation or people who were always in the margins.
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: And you know, when I was an engineer, I led people to Christ in every chemical plant I worked in.
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: When I traveled around the world for business, I would hand out Bibles all around.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Down in Texas, my friend started nicknaming me John the Baptizer Because I mean that was just a part of my nature.
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: And you know what, when I looked at my business card, I never had Christian engineer on my business card.
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: One of the things that hurt us as the church is we feel like we got to put our name on everything and sometimes it's better if we go unidentified and just love people.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: When you look at the book of Acts, acts 19,.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: Christ followers were not recognized as Christ followers into the gospel crossed lines and boundaries Right and they went to people on the margins.
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: And the people on the margins said you remind us of Christ?
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: They didn't have to name themselves, it was the people they loved on and existing with, and that's the deal.
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: And so our work starts with sin.
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: Because I believe at my core it's core is fellowship, high Christ.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: Because of my value, because of where I hold scripture, because I believe the gospel is real, because I believe that we're supposed to be a part of this work of reconciliation, that every individual has infinite dignity and value and worth, including the rest of created order, because it was made by a God who is infinitely holy and glorious, and therefore I can move and exist on the margins, I can be patient, I can be totally comfortable walking beside people who are far away from God and not trying to force and coerce anything, because I still believe in a God who moves through his Holy Spirit and he has enough power to draw all those toward him.
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: Because that's ultimately where this thing ends is not some far away heaven place, but it's when the new heavens meet the new earth, and it's all about things coming together.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: You like to preach, don't you so?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: So sense stands for what Strengthening and equipping neighborhoods together.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you came in with SENT to be the practical application of transforming a neighborhood.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that people weren't tied up with the religious piece of this.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: But you're still taking biblical principles, the heart of Christ, in through the vehicle of scent and you also have Fellowship, high Christ.
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: Yes, and another part of this was when I was an engineer.
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: My engineering company would always say this hey, we will match your giving to a nonprofit organization.
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: And I was like, okay, great, I give a ton of my income to my local church and to other Christian ministries that do the work that you're always bringing people to talk to us about.
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: They said, well, we can't donate to a religious organization, right?
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: You have to have this other vehicle.
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: And so I'm like we're smarter than this Church, we're smarter than this.
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: There's a way around this right, and we can still do kingdom work and not have to put a title on front of it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: And so we care about the whole person.
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: That's what that's a part of this creation.
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: You know I was talking about before the diapers and everything else.
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: There's a, there's a whole person, there's a whole earth, and we have to be concerned about all of it.
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: And so, with sin, you know, we have three major pillars.
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: The first one is education, cradle to career.
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: Because even though I have a master's degree, my master's is in Christian education.
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: My wife has a master's degree.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: We don't believe that college is for everyone, but right now, in the high-risk neighborhood, right within a 10-minute drive radius, only 22 percent of the kids ages zero through four have any access to early childhood education.
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: Now they say, if a kid doesn't learn how to read by the end of the first grade, they'll likely never catch up in their academic career.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: Why does that matter?
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: Because the kids in my neighborhood, right now they don't have some of the same advantages as their counterparts across town and all the weight is on the kindergarten and first grade teacher to make sure that they stay caught up, which is insane.
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: Then the average African-American kid right now in high crest is slated to have a household income of $19,000 a year at the age of 35.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: The average Hispanic kid is slated to have a household income of $22,000 to $26,000 a year at the age of 35.
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: That is telling a kid at the age of six that you're going to grow up in poverty, your kids are going to grow up in poverty and likely your grandkids are going to grow up in poverty unless something changes.
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: Guess who the change is going to be.
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: We're going to be the change.
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: Then we have our business developing and housing pillar.
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: We do a couple of things.
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: We help entrepreneurs launch their own businesses.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: Really is tying people in to existing resources and community.
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: You have a small business development center and you have groups like Omni Circle.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: They do tremendous jobs at that.
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: We're not trying to replicate that.
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: All we're trying to do is connect people to those resources.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: So you invite them into the space.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: Because we love them.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: And you know what?
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: Because we're present, because most of my church staff live, all my teaching team and most of my staff live in the high-class community.
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: Proximity matters People closest to the problem have the best solutions and 66% of my sense staff lives in the community.
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: I told you I live in the best community this side of new Jerusalem.
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: I totally believe that that is not smoke.
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: That is my belief and and so we also.
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: Um, we built the first brand new house in the high crest community in over 60 years back in 2019, we built Topeka's first net zero house that's, a house that produces as much energy as it uses last year, in 2023, and sold it.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: We have done over 20 housing projects over the last five years.
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: We not only build houses, we rehab houses and we do curb appeal.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: We invest up to 10 grand into the existing home of homeowners.
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: And then we have a beat the heat program where we help people without air conditioner, because most of our homes were built for Forest Air Force Base back in the 40s.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: They don't have central AC and so we get discount air conditioners into the homes of existing homeowners.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: A lot of those homes don't have any central.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, and they still have the wall heaters.
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: And no wall air conditioner.
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: No wall air conditioner, so we put that in, and then our community health and wellness umbrella.
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: So this is one that has grown.
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: So not only were we a food desert, so we were a mental health desert, physical health desert, a transportation desert, affordable housing desert.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: We were a desert desert desert.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: Early childhood.
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: We were one of the few places in the county that's an early childhood education desert.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: But we were determined to be a sending oasis.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: Meaning what Meaning?
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: We were going to be a spot of hope and light that not only looked at bringing resources but sending resources.
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: Too often in neighborhoods like mine, the Highcrest neighborhood is not only one of the most under-resourced neighborhoods in Kansas, it's one of the most under-resourced neighborhoods in the entire country, and so we said Actually made some national news in that back in 2012.
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we said we're not trying to collect resources, we're trying to send solutions and strategies, and so we we have sent prep around early childhood education.
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: You heard about our housing and then so we started in 2020.
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: We started a mental health department because we saw they brought out studies that isolation was causing the same kind of damage to people as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: Our mental health department gave away last year over thirty seven thousand dollars in mental health resources.
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: Our mental health.
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: We go all the way down to a fee, just a scale of five dollars an hour.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: And if you make below 50 percent of the AMI area median income, we find grant funds for you to get the help.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: So does SENT have that as a standalone or is this other organizations coming in?
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: No, we have that department that's internal.
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: We're also a licensed addiction counseling facility.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: Now we do outpatient care, both individual and group.
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: We also have case management.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: So that's where the game changes, because one of our core values is a holistic approach.
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: So because of our case management and stuff, when somebody comes and connects with SEND, they get connected with all the resources.
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: And here's where this is going.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: This is where we're building here in August we're about to bring to Shawnee County in our building trauma-informed occupational therapy it doesn't exist in Shawnee County or-informed occupational therapy it doesn't exist in Shawnee County or in Douglas County right now.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: Right now, if you need that source and I know because people in my family need it we were driving to Kansas City for it.
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: My wife was having to take a full day off of work every week to drive our kids to Kansas City for that it's going to be in the building.
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: Carriage Clinics is looking at partnering with us to come into the building to do dental and medical in the building.
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: Carriage's Clinics is looking at partnering with us to come into the building to do dental and medical in the building.
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: Wonderfully Made Pediatrics is looking at doing holistic care and helping people, because not only do we have our Scent Market that works on the development side of food insecurity, but we're getting ready to start the Southside Filling Station food pantry here in August and so we're steady looking for partners around that.
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: Impact Avenues is moving their impact days to Avondale East to use both SEND and Fellowship High Crest space and phase two of that looks at a.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: We look at moving the case management stuff there.
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: We're deepening our partnership with Mirror.
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: We're already partnered with Mirror but there's some things we offer that they don't and some things they offer that we don't, and so we have been steady deepening that that they don't and some things they offer that we don't, and so we have been steady deepening that partnership.
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: We're working with DCF on a deeper relationship now and so working with that steady partnering with them.
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: We have in our building through the church we have our free community party room for families to gather so they won't be isolated.
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: You don't have to pay us anything.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: You put down a deposit.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: If nothing's broken broken you get that back.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: But you get a team of volunteers.
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: You get a cotton candy machine, snow cone machine, popcorn machine, all the audio video equipment.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: You have a space.
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: They help you decorate the space.
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: You show up with cupcakes or a cake and you have a birthday party, graduation party, funeral repass, whatever you want.
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: In that space we have a fully functioning audio video podcast studio because, remember those economics?
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: I told you about household incomes.
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: Well, there's 68,000 jobs in the state of Kansas that you have to have tech training for, and so we are able to give people all the behind the scenes stuff for that.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: And nonprofits and small businesses can come in shoot their podcasts or their commercials in that space.
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: We are expanding different things in the building.
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: We're trying to hire another mental health therapist right now to expand services because we're doing some of the groups like are making sense of your work group.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: People are recruit, people are coming out of that group and recruiting their friends for the group because of the phenomenal results we're seeing.
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: We're helping to train our schools and other organizations with TBI because we have licensed practitioners that can go and train those things.
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: And so when you look at all the things that are in the building now, you look at community action is in the building, right, and they do all their things.
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: You look at CRC Care Center and Mary Thomas and her team do a tremendous job with tax help and utility help.
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: The things that people have been in meetings saying they want to build is one stop shop.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: Utility help the things that people have been in meetings saying they want to build is one stop shop.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: We've been silently building there with our housing, with our early childhood education, with all those different things now being in the building and we've just been silently doing it and saying we're just going to do the work we are.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: We just found out recently that our small church we average.
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: Before COVID we were around 350 average.
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: Now we're around 172 average.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: Our small church just got nominated as one of the three finalists for the Caraprodo Urban Church of the Year.
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: Congratulations.
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: So a lot of people think that it's all sin.
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: But remember I said the work starts with sin, but its core is fellowship, high credit and the church is doing the work.
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: Two years ago the church won the Shawnee County Health Department's Organization of the Year.
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: Because of our investments in community health and what I want to.
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: I just want people to understand that man, you can be a believer and you can do work with non-Christian organizations and pardon the well and through those relationships I can't tell you how many people I've been able to share the gospel with and see step over the line of faith and baptize their families because of what we started at.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: And it's the same sheet of music TRM as well to do that.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: You know you serve and you don't come in with your Jesus on the front end, but your Jesus is with you on all ends.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: But it's not a religious effort.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: It is taking the values that Christ taught us to be able to love our neighbors.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: So some amazing things have happened in six years.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what's your biggest challenge that you are still trying to overcome in Highcrest?
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: The biggest challenge is we.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: Some of the models that we brought in have been different.
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: Right, and here's my deal we need different models.
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: I drive a Nissan Titan and I have friends that drive Chevys.
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: You know what?
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: We still go on day nights together and we're all right.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: And here's the deal we got to get across to people If you have a religious community, development nonprofit, keep going.
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: If you do all your outreach through your church, keep going.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: If you're a multi-site or different things of that nature, keep going.
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: There's not one way of doing this work.
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: But sometimes when you come in with different methods, in different ways, people take that as an affront rather than saying how can we partner?
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: Well, and so that's one of the deals.
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: And then it's.
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: I think that the community is seeing the progress that's happening.
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: And our deal is we're trying to work ourselves out of a job in Highcrest.
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: We're trying to get the neighborhood to tell us you can leave.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: That's our, that's our biggest goal.
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: But we need, there's, some upfront things.
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: So, for instance, barry, the first house we built in Highcrest right, we paid one hundred fifty four thousand dollars to build that house.
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: Ok, we sold it for one ten.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: We have 20 acres of land in the Highcrest community that we want to develop.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: High crest community that we wanted to develop.
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: We call it the Fremont Hill Project.
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: And when we went to get an appraisal on that land so that we can use the capital and the resources of that land as security to go do some other work.
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: The appraisal valued that land at the same amount as a 1,200-square-foot house that we built two years prior to buying that land, at the same amount as a 1,200-square-foot house that we built two years prior to buying that land.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: And just seeing, like man, if we just had the right amount of help, there could be tremendous turnover.
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: Because of my engineering background and project management and that's what I did I did project management stuff toward the end of my engineering career, stuff right toward the end of my engineering career we're doing things that are not only heart healthy but financially healthy and fiscally wise, and so with just a little bit of help we could go over it.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: So there used to be a day when many people in the community that didn't live there didn't know where Highcrest was.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: There was a meeting that I was in over at the Square Overland Station.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: About 80 pretty well-known community leaders were there and I asked them the question how many of you know where Highcrest is Out of 80, about 20 hands went up.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Them the question how many of you know where Highcrest is Out?
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Of 80, about 20 hands went up.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: That's changed dramatically over the years, but it's still Highcrest.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It's still up on the hill, it's still over there.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: You've done a tremendous job of trying to put Highcrest more on the map than it ever was before, because a lot of people didn't even know, didn't care.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Why should people care about the health of Highcrest?
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: People should care because the people of Highcrest are people and what I found is that the people of Highcrest were doing great things.
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: Before I ever got there, man, I didn't create the wave.
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: I'm riding the wave that people like you and your team that was there with Ned Reach, even before all of us, the African-American churches that existed in that community in Southeast Topeka, all the people, man, southern Hills, all the people that were doing all this work for years before I'm coming in.
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: It's the old principle of some people plant seeds, some people water and some people see.
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: Some people plant seeds, some people water and some people seed.
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: And I'm coming in and I'm just yielding fruit and I'm trying to.
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: I tell that story all the time that you just told to people saying we didn't start this work.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: We're continuing this work.
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: We were handed the baton and people should care because people live there and that's a part of God's creation.
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: And I believe that sometimes we don't see the impact we want to see because we try to water down the aid Right now, in 2020, they did a housing survey for the city and they said we have a 25,000 house shortage and we need to invest $53 million a year for 10 years to see the impact that we want to see and close this gap.
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: But the city of Topeka at that time was only spending $5.3 million per year on housing.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: I like numbers and I said, man, if you take that $5.3 million a year and you spread it out all across the city, you're never going to close the gap.
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: You got to decide on a starting place and you got to make a difference.
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: If you even describe the Dave Ramsey which I'm going to be honest, I'm not a big fan of Dave Ramsey.
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: There's some things I like about Dave Ramsey, but I'm not because he doesn't deal well with generational poverty, he just doesn't.
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: And but even he and his snowball method says this you start with the bill that's closest to be paid off, you pay that off and then take that money and roll it up to the next.
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: I was picked a couple of years ago as one of the inaugural members of the Kansas Future Fellows.
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: The governor and the Kansas Children's Cabinet picked 11 of us from around the state to develop solutions for families all over Kansas for the next 75 to 100 years.
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: My whole premise was to develop systems and strategies where the everyday person could transform their neighborhoods without leading Superman.
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to eliminate all the red, the intensive care and at risk neighborhoods from the city of Topeka's neighborhood health map over the next 20 to 25 years.
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: Now, I can't do that alone, but I feel like God has gifted me and that's why I went through all that engineering training and Six Sigma training and got certified in black belt stuff and all that kind of thing is to come up with systems and strategies that I can then hand out for free for people to go repeat this work in their own neighborhood.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: So Highcrest one of these days says hey, thanks very much, Jonathan, you can go somewhere else now, which you had mentioned.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: That's your goal.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Say we don't need you anymore.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Where would you go next?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Wherever God sends.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: I've always lived with a good suitcase, but you love your neighborhood and this is long game.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: It didn't get where it was when we stepped in there around 2012 overnight.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: It happened over generations.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: And then does it take generations to change?
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: No, I'm going to tell you why.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: So last year the city of Topeka 2023, had a record high murders.
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: Do you remember the last time they had a record high murders before?
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: That Got a good guess on it 2018, when we started, and at that time, highcrest was one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city.
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: I mean, when I first moved here, my co-workers then said man, we're concerned because I said I have to live in a neighborhood.
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: If I'm coming, I have to live in a neighborhood.
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: That's one of my conditions for coming.
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: If I can't do that, I'm not coming.
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: Because the shepherd stays with the sheep, okay, and um, they, we were having somebody die in the neighborhood every two to three days.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: It felt like, and I said, man, enough is, enough of this.
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: We've got shirts made.
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: We put steps to nonviolent protest on the back.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: We it was.
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: It was crazy last year when we had record high murders.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: You know how many murders happened in Highcrest.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Not very many.
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: One happening?
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: Huh, chris, not very many One.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: Why is that?
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: Clemson University did a study that shows a 1% increase in food insecurity can lead to a 15% increase in violent crime.
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: Our holistic approach is working.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: I don't have to shout this, I'm just going to keep doing the work and one day somebody is going to come and observe and hopefully some of your partners that listen to this will come and want to invest and we can go ahead and really get this thing rocking.
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: Our strategy is working.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: What does rocking look like to you?
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Rocking is one Sounds like rocking now.
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: So here's the deal.
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: When we first started, girard used to be one of the most feared streets in the whole city.
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: Where do we start doing most of our housing projects?
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: At Girard?
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: Girard Right now, pinecrest is the city or is the street in our neighborhood with the most property violations.
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: We have a whole plan for wanting to transform the whole street.
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: We sold a house on Girard last year I mean on Pinecrest last year, rehabbed it and so my deal is where?
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: So I've been places before where really high.
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: I remember I was at an airport and one of the US president at the time was landing and everybody ran to the windows and I kind of stayed sitting in my seat, kind of like what I did with the eclipse yesterday.
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: I didn't, I didn't look up one time and I just I just didn't care.
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: But I got to spend a whole day with Dr John Perkins.
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: He's pretty much the father of community development and so I kind of geeked out with that and he said he said, jonathan, here's the reason why you need some real estate developers on your team.
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: He said pastors get excited about one house, but you don't truly change a neighborhood until you start to see a hundred houses change.
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: See, our whole goal, even with housing, is to change 15% of the existing homes that existed in High Crest when we began.
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: That's 315 of the 2,030 homes that existed.
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: Because if you look at classical movements, if you get about that amount, it tips the triangle.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: Only 10% of the country marched with Dr King.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: I don't need 100% to move in order to make a shift.
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: I can do a small amount and it'll start to snowball the road.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: We could ask tons of questions here, but maybe one last question how will you know that you have achieved what you believe is the assignment that God has given you for High Crest?
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: How will you know that that neighborhood, one of the greatest deed and care neighborhoods in the community, is the first one that maybe can be modeled in other neighborhoods?
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: I won't be modeled in other neighborhoods.
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: I won't.
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: So a lot of people think a lot of people's favorite MLK speech is the.
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: I have a dream speech, but that's not mine.
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: My favorite MLK speech is the.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: I've been to the mountaintop speech, followed by his letter from Birmingham jail.
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: I've been to the mountaintop speeches.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: It's the sermon he preached the night before he died and he drew upon Moses getting to go and see into the promised land but not being able to enter with him and the work I'm doing right now, I realize that I, in all likelihood I won't experience the fruit of You're okay with that.
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: I'm okay with that because I know where my reward is.
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: But here's what we've built.
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: Almost every year we've been in existence we've had someone from either Center Fellowship, highcrest, be nominated into Top 20 Under 40 or leadership graded Topeka.
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: Every year we spend resources to help those in our communities get their resumes professionally done, to help get professional help on their applications for those programs and to help them get nominated into those programs because we're building leaders.
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: This is about more than me.
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: I only preach right now one out of three Sundays or every other Sunday, about two Sundays a month, because it's not about me.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: I've listened and shortened my sermon time.
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: I think I preach maybe 15, maybe 20 minutes on Easter because it's not about me.
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: I am trying to decentralize myself as much as possible where I'm not needed and if I can get to that point where the beer truck hits me and I die and everything continues going, then I've lived out my mission here.
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: But I won't find that out till I'm in glory, looking back on the other side and sharing those who are left on to continue to work.
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's well said.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Jonathan, normally I have Lamanda and Miriam jump in here, but there's been so much that you have been able to offer here today Lamanda, miriam.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Any questions for Jonathan?
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: I don't have any questions.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: I just want to make sure that you know how much we appreciated you all stepping forward during the cold spell.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: There was only a handful, barely a handful, that stepped forward the way you all did to help folks, to help save people's lives, and that meant so much to us because it was really important work.
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: So I just want to say thank you so much that you all were willing to do that.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: When it was nuts, it was just nuts.
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: Thank you all for the opportunity and that you would trust us enough to be invited into that just to use our resources.
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: We want to use everything to be multipurpose in our building, in our space, which we don't have our own building in our space except for the fire extinguisher, and so if I can get around not building buildings, I will, and keep using spaces, but it's to be used.
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: That's the problem with.
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: Most churches have about 20% asset utilization.
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: In the engineering world, I could never get a capital project approved that had 20% asset utilization, and so I want our space to be about 80% asset utilization, giving us time for maintenance and cleaning.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: That's it, yeah, amanda.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: You know, I think, no questions.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: I think I just want to show appreciation for a couple of things.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Ditto to what Miriam said about the warming center, you know a lot of people can say things and then you can slash that amount by 80% of people that do it, and y'all are doers, and so I am thankful for that.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: I also think that there's so much that aligns in what we do, and the main thing is that we are doing this for the kingdom.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: It isn't about us, it isn't even just about what we can do on earth.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: It's about that we're trying to do things on earth that make a difference in the lives in eternity, and I just love that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: And then, lastly, you know, I think one of the things that I appreciate about Jonathan is we've been in a couple of meetings together where he has vocalized helpers.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: Helping the helpers and that's been something that's on my heart for about a year and a half.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Now is so often it's easy for us to quote unquote talk about the marginalized.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Well, is that true?
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, and we saw Jesus do it all the time.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: But a lot of times there are people that are considered marginalized that cover it up because they aren't deemed marginalized, and that's really on my heart right now is to really look at the people sitting to your left and your right in that Sunday school class, look at the people that are in those governmental meetings, look at people that are the CEOs, those kinds of things.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: So often we've deemed those normalized and I hate that word, but normalized society-wise.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: But they are the people that are hurting the most.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: And there are more connections and similarities between whether we're talking about the quote-unquote marginalized in Highcrest, whether we're talking about people experiencing homelessness all over the city and pastors and educated and, fill in the blank, we're more connected and similar than not.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: And the bottom line is we're all broken, we've all got weaknesses.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: We can talk about all the great things that he's doing, that I'm doing, that the teams are doing, but the bottom line is, the reason any of this flourishes is because we are realistic with what we're weak in and we're taking our own weaknesses and brokenness and talking about them, whether that's our past, our present, it doesn't have to be our future.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: And I love that about him because he is all about helping anyone that's in front of him, regardless if it's his neighborhood, regardless if it's this person, and I love that.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: I feel like that.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: That's kind of one thing that we're united with is we need to all be looking at each other and realizing all of ourselves, including our own, need help in some way, whether that's food help or therapy, help, healing or sometimes correction.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: We all need that and I appreciate how he vocalizes that helpers should be helping helpers.
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and a couple of things.
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: I have a tattoo on my wrist.
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: On the top side is the word tetelestai, and so it is finished.
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: It's Christ's last work on the cross.
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: On the other side is a semicolon, because at one point I did consider taking my own life.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: Right now I'm in one of sense, I'm in the making sense of your worth group.
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: There's 14 guys in this initial round of that group of 33% of us are African-American, from ages early twenties all the way through eighties, different economic backgrounds, everything else.
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: The guy leading it said I've never been in a diverse group like this.
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: We have a social emotional learning team at the church.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: So even when you get ready to volunteer, the first thing we do is have you go just have a time with a therapist to see if this is the right time for you to serve, is this the healthy move for you?
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: And then how can we be good leaders and help set good boundaries so that you don't burn out?
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: We're bringing in therapists just to spend time with our teachers at SEM Prep every month with them to digest life.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: They also get access to all of our case management services.
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: I'm not building things for other folks, I'm building things for the whole person, including me, because I need all those same tools and different things in my life.
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: I need to help parenting my kids and in helping the schools and help with my house.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Guys doing life together.
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: We're doing life together.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: You might have professional expert clergy, you may have social workers, you may have psychologists, you may have all these things, but we're still doing life together.
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: We're still doing life together, yeah.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Jonathan, this has really been a good time with you today.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: I know we haven't had a chance to catch up for a while.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the deep dive that you've taken, not just going wide but deep and wide later, as God provides.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: And also, you know, for TRM and all the people who had come before and you mentioned some of those different churches and all of that you know to plant some seeds and then hearing God clearly, clearly, say time to hand the ball off, and to see that we handed off the right, the right guy that's going to carry it and the right methods and and there'll be a day where you'll do the same and uh but uh, you will invest, as people have always invested before us, and we build upon those things to see what you've done and to know that, um, it a difference in a place of our community which I lived there at one time over in Highcrest on Fremont.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: So I understand, I understand.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: I'm an alumni.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: This is what some people there told me, and so it's a part of part of who we are and as part of this community.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: There should never be a neighborhood or a person in a community that nobody knows about, and that's an unhealthy community, and what you're doing is taking it more forward to help people that live there, including yourself, to know they matter, and helping a community know they matter too.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: As my friend Jonathan Brooks at Ministries in Chicago says, there are no God-forsaken neighborhoods.
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: There are only church-forsaken neighborhoods.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: I love your balance with what sense doing and what the church is doing, and and and not saying it's this or that, it is all of that.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: So Jonathan's a bled who is the founder president of scent and also sent prep, now also pastor of fellowship high crest.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being on our community.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to our community, our mission.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: If you would like more information about Topeka Rescue Mission, you can go to trmonlineorg.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: That's trmonlineorg and this is going to be on Facebook and also I think Josh will put a link up to Scent on there as well.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: So thank you again for listening to Our Community, Our Mission.